Appearance:

Mental Model: A thin young woman. Long black hair and steel grey eyes, Attractive and consistently equipped with (built with?) makeup on, claiming her appearance is to assist with human interaction.
She styles herself as an elegant forceful commander when in her element aboard the ship. She dresses in uniform (though not necessarily an official navy uniform) unless it is highly stressed she dress a specific way for events. She wears glasses though it's anyone's guess if this truly helps her vision in any way, and rarely without an earring and hair clips resembling her sensor arrays.

Ship: High Tech look?

Background and profile:

Her personal interests are dominated by ‘xenology’ (that is; most fields of anthropology) and ever curious about what every person is doing and why. Considerable use of her advanced processing power is consumed simply by observing and disseminating anything she can gather from her probing. After several dozen awkward questions and a stern talking to she tries to shy away from questions of biology though. Besides this, her interests still tend to be intellectual, ‘the high sciences’ primarily, working with nebula knowledge and technology. She does attempt to use human research in conjunction with the navy, but this usually winds up with her ranting about our primitive misunderstood failings. When asked to provide examples of nebula peak research she claims she is a prime example of such in action, and is more effective than anything she could construct for them. When left on her own, she usually winds up ever trying to tweak FTL formulae or shield efficiency with mixed results.

Soma has shown several contradictions that might have contributed to her leaving the nebula fleet. She has both an insatiable curiosity about humans, but seems to become shy, nervous or even disturbed when interacting with them on her own. She occasionally refers to herself in robotic terms (though with little consistency, she isn’t tired, just ‘low on charge’, she doesn't search for people, she ‘scans’) but also fussily obsesses over things like making sure that her ship is germ free in areas she alone accesses. While her ship is decorated with numerous examples of advanced nebula technology, which she is all too happy to consistently remind people about, her personal tactics tend to be rather simple and brutal, favouring to simply isolate and eliminate the target quickly and easily.

Superficial examination makes it easy to question why (or even if) she has actually left the Nebula fleet, but questioning her directly actually seems to offend her greatly and she will refuse to answer and usually walk away from conversation in a huff. It's strongly requested this isn't abused to get her to stop criticising inferior inefficient naval sciences unless direly needed.

Questions and Answers:

Why has your ship left the Nebula Fleet?

Soma was left with conflicting orders that amounted to ‘figure out humans’ and found any attempts at killing them to be very inefficient to working toward that goal. In addition she is quite prideful in her superior ship details, but she was built into a role that would not give her much justification to be retrofitted by society over more standard combat tactic minds (who would only use her information for their own benefit and only keep her around until better scouts were made), and facing a life in slow decay until redundancy has her scrapped or reassigned to a lesser role, is what possibly pushed her over the edge into going off on her own.

How did she leave?

Being an an experiment in a dedicated ‘anti humanity tactics’ mental model, she was left on her own to work out specifics once she had matured enough for the role as the fleet foresaw. She initially abandoned her fleet as a ruse and ‘crashed’ herself nearby a small poorly armed outpost, neglecting to mention her origin she claimed to be a researcher sent to study the ship, while she was more then capable of providing convincing fake records with her stranglehold of their systems, she was found out after barely two hours, earning mild scrutiny from being caught attempting to sneak into a mens changing room and her claiming confusion as to why the rooms were segregated confirmed their suspicions. Amongst a brief storm of drama and panic, as immediate attempts to subdue her failed, she surprisingly surrendered herself and claimed she was really impressed she was found out so quickly, and would be happy to cooperate so long as she can peacefully observe humans in kind. Not being in a position to deny the deadly ship and her personal abilities, they accepted and found her being an occasionally irritating, but honest ally.

Does she have any notable friends or comrades outside of the PCs? (or, Know anyone in the fleet?)

Likely. She was, as close as an only arguably self aware race of robots have (or at least sees herself as, whether or not it is actually a ‘thing’) a member of its ‘nobility’, outfitted with shaped shielding, tactical ftl, communication interference on almost any bandwidth imaginable and more, a lot was expected of her and her very job was experimental, even though it quickly eroded her ‘sanity’ as the fleet might see it, she manages a codex of ships seen and hall of famous mental models (obtained from pre-leaving records and intercepted communications), if only for personal reasons of cultural comparison (and not at all with visible tinges of jealousy as with every innovation, she becomes so much more outdated) as opposed to straight combat purposes. More mundanely, she knows of some command ship models, since her job was to work out counter strategies to aid their own methods of human suppression.

What does she think of humans?

Soma could write a large novel on her feelings of humans and fail to really clear much up for the reader. She fears what humans are and can do but is intensely curious about how they are different from her own race. She will if left to her own devices, inevitably start questioning people about every little thing they're doing or planning, or just trying to observe the target go about daily tasks. Any attempts to reverse this, she acts disturbed, paranoid and simply answers by claiming superiority, human minds couldn't even comprehend one like herself.

What does she think of the rest of the Fleet?

She doesn't mince words about her views on nebula superiority and human inferiority, at least as far as technology goes, but she enjoys having a measure of autonomy and the chance to really learn about humans. Finally, working alongside humanity in combat does appeal to her for multiple reasons (study of tactics, human reactions of fear, happiness, communications to interrupt, etc, give her a purpose). She doesn't view much wrong with her choice on a surface examination, as her only real priority was to conduct her job which she is still doing, and although she personally doesn't prefer combat, she has no objections, either. She might actually be more comfortable fighting the fleet the humans, due to their ease with survival, simplistic tactics and a modest flexing of her own superiority as a combat class ship model.

Does she have a crew?

Soma has a crew, she's more comfortable with humans if she knows where they are and they won't scheme to destroy their own ship. Possibly a decent compliment as she offers the chance to work with some of the most advanced experimental technology conceived of, for the low price of cameras being everywhere.

If so, describe them (at least the major roles/officers). What does she think of them?

No ideas on this yet, she probably isn't actively fucking her crew, yet.

How did she meet the other PCs?

Soma can easily find other nebula ship models based on her observation of humanity and familiarity with nebula fleet technology, in addition she likely has shown she might leave or take other desperate measures if kept isolated and surrounded by a perceived enemy for too long (even if she is crazy about them). Being kept with others of her kind is the most optimal way to keep her placated and provide better combat options.

Noteworthy Crew?

Soma

Mental Model

X

Details!

Further Details

Perks

Electronic Countermeasures (ECM):AUX - ECM systems are a combination of chaff, electronic noise, and jamming systems designed to confuse and confound communications systems and active sensor sweeps. The Rating of an ECM system indicates its range in hexes from the ship operating the system. ECM does not jam communications across subsections of a ship.

Electronic Counter Countermeasures (ECCM):AUX - ECCM Systems either block jamming, or punch right through it by overpowering the signals. ECCM, naturally, counters active ECM within the area of effect. As with ECM systems, the rating of an ECCM system indicates its range in hexes from the unit in question.

Communications Interception: Allows a ship to listen in on any communications carried on nearby. not always useful in combat, but extremely handy for gathering information, as quietly eavesdropping on the enemy is quite the convenient thing. Adds its rating to any contested tests to do so.

Stealth Detection: The ship has specialized sensors designed to defeat cloaking fields and other systems used to "hide", whether by searching for small distortions in the background sensor data, or using advanced systems such as tachyon-based sensors. Reduce the concealment rating added by cloaking systems by half.

Dual-Purpose Guns:Applicable only to destroyer main guns or Cruiser secondary guns. By spending an action the ship may load specialized flak ammunition into its turrets, reducing effectiveness against other capital ships but becoming a major threat to strike craft. Flak ammunition reduces the weapon's damage modifier by half, but has the Scatter quality.

Tactical Hyperspace System: Specialized astrogation subroutines and rapid-charging systems tied into the ship’s FTL drive allow for short hops through hyperspace during combat. Tactical hyperspace jumps may be attempted instead of the ship’s usual movement in a round. The ship rolls Astrogation against a difficulty equal to half the distance the ship intends to travel. Success indicates the jump is on target. Failure causes the ship to scatter in a randomly-determined direction (roll a d6) a number of hexes equal to the Margin of Failure. Botching leads to some unfortunate consequence up to the GM. Even with the additional systems it takes 3 rounds to charge between jumps, including any from normal FTL travel. Ships exiting a FTL jump are considered to have moved their combat speed for the purposes of penalties to attacks and defense. The Tactical Hyperspace System is an auxiliary system in the ship's Drive Section.

Force Screen Projector:AUX Specialized graviton emitters and modifications to your ship’s shielding systems allow it to create a near-impenetrable wall of force. A force screen is a plainly visible energy field that may be extended along 4 contiguous hexes, up to 4 hexes away from the ship. It has an Armor Value equal to your shield’s DM, and prevents anything from actively passing through it, whether that be bullets, beams, or even entire vehicles. If a force screen would take an overkill hit, destroy it, and halve its effective armor if it takes a heavy damage hit. Recharges every 5 rounds.

All Nebula ships have energy shields as a standard system, at no cost. Shields provide 1/4 of their damage rating (round down) as armor to the entire ship when active, but not used to actively block. To block an attack, the targeted ship expends an action, and rolls a new defense, using Pilot (space) and the shield's accuracy instead of the ship's Maneuver Value. If this second roll is a success, the attack still hits, but the shield subtracts an amount of damage equal to its DM times the block's MoS.

If a ship takes a Light damage result after blocking with her shield, the shield's damage multiplier is halved. If she takes a Heavy damage result after blocking, the shield is automatically destroyed. In either case, no further damage is applied to the ship herself. Overkill results still destroy the ship. When not used to block, a shield takes damage as a normal weapon, and is destroyed if its total penalties reach -5.